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The ingenuity of farmers should never come into question.
They’ve come up with hundreds of ways to utilize twine and duct tape. When times are tough, farmers find solutions.
That’s why its no surprise that in times of drought farmers rekindled an old idea of stretching their feed supplies further.
Before the cows can be raised and the crops harvested, a dairy must have a name.
After submitting four different dairy names that were already taken, Marylou Graf found her inspiration from a box of pre-packaged Kellogg’s Rice Krispies treats on the counter.
Rumen acidosis results from an excessive acid load in the rumen not neutralized by salivary or feed buffers. Changes in physiology, metabolism and behavior of heat-stressed cows increase their susceptibility to both subacute (SARA) and acute acidosis.
In mid-August, we held a teaching seminar for our software users in Denver, Colorado.
This session was focused on the more experienced nutritionist, one familiar with the AMTS program and comfortable with the model and biology behind it.
Anyone who has taken a managerial economics class knows all about using profit maximization models to determine the investment and output levels that return the greatest profit.
A profit maximization model for dairy rations requires an algorithm using a production function between net energy intake and milk production. This function increases at a decreasing rate.
“What are the cows telling you?” This is the first question consultants often ask after a major ration change. This might be the inclusion of a new commodity, changing forages, new high-moisture corn or the addition of a new additive.
I have made about a dozen trips to Japan over the last decade to work with dairies on the north island of Hokkaido.
While the Japanese are internationally known for “Kaizen,” referring to a focus on continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering and business management, it is impressive how quickly they adapt ideas from around the world into their dairy sector.
Feed software programs have recently become more widely implemented and are utilized to gather and evaluate a tremendous amount of feeding-related information.
All nutritionists look for ways to reduce risks. This is done by keeping a close eye on sources of variation in the diet, from changes in forage dry matter (DM) to managing consistency in the TMR.
The rationale for reducing these risks is to ensure cows have adequate dietary sources of nutrients that can be reliably delivered to target tissues to consistently support optimal performance.
A question that needs to be asked when thinking about starch digestibility when feeding high-producing dairy cattle is: “Do you want to feed the rumen bugs, or do you want to feed the wildlife?"
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